Displaying items by tag: family breakdown

A new review from the Children's Commissioner has shown that 23% of UK families are lone-parent - 10% higher than Europe’s average. The communities minister highlighted the need for better government policies that support families. The head of public policy said, ‘What is required is not just laws but wholesale culture changes. We need to value marriage (between a man and a woman) as a sacred, lifelong bond, and promote marriage as the best and most stable and successful structure for bringing up children.’ There are no policy recommendations in Part 1 of the review, but Part 2 will look at the impact of its policies on families. Sadly, for too long, the Government has done little or nothing to promote or support families. In fact, it has done the opposite, finding time in the coronavirus crisis to pass legislation for ‘no-fault divorce’. This means potentially enabling one partner to unilaterally destroy the family.

I am so privileged to be part of a church that has transformation at the very heart of it. My husband is an associate minister at Victory Outreach church in Manchester. Our church has victory homes for men and women who are in a life of addiction and crime.

Last weekend, I was at our victory homes Christmas dinner where families of the people that are in the recovery programme are invited to come and celebrate. Many of the people in a drug lifestyle have tense, if any relationship, with their families due to their habit. Many families have given up on their loved ones, thinking that they will never change.

Through the recovery programme, we see many addicts set free from drug addiction and people healed of hepatitis and hearts healed from the roots that caused them to spiral out of control in the first place. It is only through meeting with Jesus and allowing him to work on a deep level that real, lasting transformation happens.

Jeremiah 30;17 ‘I will restore you to health and heal your wounds,’ declares the Lord, ‘because you are called outcast, Zion for whom no one cares.’ God’s heart is to not only heal us but also to restore broken families. We all want to be loved and have somewhere to belong, that’s why God created the family. So, let’s pray for struggling families for:

• Reconciliation – that in the midst of the hurt and the anger that God will release love, positivity, and hope and allow them to take steps towards fixing the relationship.
• Forgiveness – allow those involved to realise the mistakes that have been made and ask for forgiveness. Ask for negative feelings and hate to be removed and replaced with a love and kindness and a willingness to trust God. He works ALL things out for good.
• Communication – for God to open the lines of communication and for them to think about what they speak over each other. Replace anger and hate with love and respect. There are life and death in the tongue!

Natasha Ruddock
Communications Manager 

Lord Farmer, a committed Christian, has called for the appointment creation of a ‘minister for family breakdown’ to tackle the huge problems facing the nation. He grew up in a chaotic family with alcoholic parents but became a successful businessman. In a newspaper article he refers to the ‘devastating effect of family breakdown upon the lives of young people that affect their ability to succeed in life.’ He said that all government departments experience the cost of family breakdown, and all political parties are guilty of causing the current problems. Some people say there is nothing wrong with the family; it has just changed to first marriages, remarriages, cohabiting couples, lone-mother families, lone-father families, stepfamilies, multi-parent families and multi-sibling families. Lord Farmer said these ‘reconstituted’ families not only place a stress on the adults involved, but have strongly negative effects upon the children, in terms of health, education, peer group relationships and life chances.